Bad Neighbor

On Aug. 22, the most expensive home ever sold in Southeast
Portland will be auctioned on the steps of the Multnomah County
Courthouse.

That auction may mark the low point of Peter Fournier’s troubled stay in Laurelhurst.

The high point
probably came in December 2006, when Fournier and his wife, Kirstie,
bought a sprawling, 12,000-square-foot, 17-room Laurelhurst home known
as the Bitar mansion for $1.825 million.

Such a price might
not raise eyebrows in the West Hills or Lake Oswego, but the Multnomah
County assessor’s office says nobody, before or since, has paid more for
a home in Southeast.

Now the Fourniers, who could not be reached for this story, are in foreclosure.

Their 1927
Mediterranean-style home—originally built for the president of the
Doernbecher furniture company—was the work of architect Herman Brookman,
who also designed such Portland landmarks as Temple Beth Israel and Fir
Acres, the Frank estate that became Lewis & Clark College. The
Bitar mansion features extraordinary woodwork, a marble-floored
ballroom, a heated pool, a servants’ wing, and elaborate tile, metalwork
and sculpture. The property sits on the equivalent of seven standard
city lots and enjoys a commanding view of the West Hills.

Yet, today, the Fourniers’ property is an eyesore.

BACK TO NATURE: The Fourniers’ lawn is not helping to attract buyers.

Credits: chrisryanphoto.com

Waist-high grass
sways on the lawn. A brush pile of ancient rhododendrons chokes the
elegant semicircular brick driveway. Ugly plaster patches mar the home’s
façade, and half-finished security gates stand watch over a property
now occupied only by a couple of previously homeless caretakers.

Banks have foreclosed
on thousands of Portland homes in recent years. And in a sense, the
Fourniers’ story is a tale of what happened when the decades-long rising
real estate tide turned into a tsunami.

But their situation
is different. For one thing, there is evidence the Fourniers had the
resources to pay their mortgage. Long before Bank of America pulled the
plug, the family walked away from their home.

“We are going to
demolish the house and sell it to the highest [bidder] to build
apartments,” Kirstie Fournier wrote March 11, 2010, in an email to a
neighbor.

“Have a nice live [sic].”

The
Fourniers’ story also shows money cannot buy happiness, particularly
when a family ill-suited to city living tries to fit into a tight-knit
neighborhood. Laurelhurst Park—like any public space—can be a dangerous
place, and there will always be friction between people whose lives
intersect.

But Peter Fournier,
whose property abutted the park, appears to have had little tolerance
for park users, and even less for his neighbors.

The Fourniers’
Laurelhurst experience echoes difficulties they had before and after
buying the Bitar mansion. Their rocky journey, from Lake Oswego to
Laurelhurst to two new homes in the past year, shows that no matter how
extensive a family’s resources, the social contract between neighbors
remains a powerful force.

Says Elisa Leverton, a 25-year Laurelhurst resident, “When they moved from here, it relieved a lot of stress for everybody.”

BEFORE PETER: The Bitar family treasured a one-of-a-kind property.

Credits: Courtesy of The Dan Volkmer Team

In the beginning, the Fourniers, who sold a $1.7 million Lake Oswego home to move to Laurelhurst, made a good impression.

For Halloween, Peter
Fournier transformed his yard. Lifelike ghouls and goblins hung from
trees and lurked in bushes. Dry ice provided a foggy background and a
sound system broadcast bone-chilling sounds.

During the record-setting December 2008 snowstorm, Fournier cleared sidewalks and even some driveways with his snowblower.

“People in the neighborhood were very excited when they moved in, especially because they had young kids,” Leverton recalls.

The previous
occupants of the Fourniers’ home, the Bitar family, owned it for 57
years. It served as the Lebanese consulate in Portland and over the
years hosted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, pianist Van Cliburn, and
numerous Oregon governors and U.S. senators. The home was also a
frequent stop on architectural tours.

Fournier hoped to restore his new home to its original condition.

“I presently live in the home the second President of the company built in 1927,” he wrote in a 2007 post on the website of Furniture World magazine. “Anybody interested in selling me their Doernbecher furniture?”

Neighbors were not
sure where Fournier’s income came from. Neither Fournier, 48, nor his
wife, Kirstie, 52, worked a conventional job.

Bad, Busy Neighbor

On a résumé she
posted online, Kirstie Fournier wrote that the couple’s residential
construction firm, Agate Investments LLC, “built dozens of residential
homes” in the previous decade and owned five residential rentals.

Agate did build some
houses in the metro area and Marion County, and renovated others, but
struggled financially. The firm’s Oregon contractor’s license had lapsed
by the time the Fourniers moved to Laurelhurst. The Oregon Home
Builders Association has no record of Agate ever having been a member.

Peter
Fournier did have family money. Documents show he is a descendent of
the founder of Procter & Gamble, which last year ranked 22nd on the
Fortune 500 list of America’s largest companies. (Fournier’s middle name
is Procter.)

When he moved to
Laurelhurst, Fournier, a 1997 Georgetown Law graduate, told neighbors he
had started a new business—Residential Security Patrol.

Portland
police had stopped responding to residential burglar alarms, so
Fournier’s plan was to hire ex-cops to respond to calls in affluent
eastside neighborhoods. Used police cars he’d bought for the company
lined his driveway.

Behind the
neighborliness and entrepreneurship, however, there was another Peter
Fournier. And a property-line dispute began to reveal a different side
of him.

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT: Dick Kroll says he endured three years of abuse from the Fourniers.

Credits: chrisryanphoto.com

Next door to Fournier lived Dick Kroll, 72, and the late
Park Bailey. The two were longtime Laurelhurst residents who bought and
renovated houses.

Their home—a brick
Georgian that rivals the Bitar mansion in its grandeur—stands
immediately east of the Fourniers’ and also borders Laurelhurst Park.

Police records and
neighbors’ accounts show the dispute took many forms: Fournier allegedly
threatened Kroll and Bailey, he frequently yelled homophobic slurs, he
blasted conservative talk radio at them with outdoor speakers for hours,
and he would shine spotlights from his property into their windows for
nights on end.

“It all started when
he tried to claim a piece of my land with his fence,” Kroll says. “And
before long, he had a halogen floodlight pointed at my house all night
long.”

Fournier and his wife
became so well known to police that officers took the unusual step of
entering a “flag” in their computer system if either was involved in a
call.

Typically, if police
are called to a neighborhood, especially in a low-crime area such as
Laurelhurst, one officer responds. Not so with the Fourniers.

He had erected a
10-foot wooden fence between his house and Kroll and Bailey’s, and
6-foot-high columns for security gates at the entrances to his driveway.
Both projects violated city code, and inspectors forced him to sharply
reduce the heights of both.

Fournier’s beef with
his next-door neighbors paralleled a dispute he had that same month with
an even more powerful neighbor—the City of Portland.

Portland
Parks and Recreation informed Fournier that the fence between his
property and Laurelhurst Park was significantly inside the park
boundary, so a big of chunk of what Fournier thought was his backyard
belonged to the park.

The fence pre-dated
Fournier. But his communication with parks employees grew increasingly
acrimonious over the course of a year.

Responding to a city
request that he remove structures that were on park property, he
chain-sawed a decrepit greenhouse and burned it in his backyard,
resulting in a blaze so big that neighbors called the Fire Bureau.

In an apparent fit of
pique, Fournier also cut down ancient rhododendrons on the disputed
land. He piled the resulting debris in his driveway, where it remains
today.

“As the plants in
question were planted by my predecessor in title, I must remove them,”
Fournier wrote to a parks official in a Feb. 11, 2011, email. “This is
very unfortunate, as the remaining Rhododendrons are quite spectacular,
and at least 80 years old.”

Fournier also tangled
with contractors and creditors. Shortly after the Fourniers moved to
Laurelhurst, for instance, a city inspector ordered Fournier and several
neighbors to repair their sidewalks.

Fournier hired Metro
Sidewalk Repair in May 2007 for $1,400 worth of repairs. Metro Sidewalk
did the work and the city inspector signed off on it—but Fournier
refused to pay his bill. It wasn’t as if he lacked the funds: His
mortgage was $8,400 a month and he had paid the home renovation firm
Hammer and Hand nearly $150,000 to spiff up his new house.

The dispute over the sidewalk tab dragged on, with lawyers on both sides, until an arbitrator finally ordered Fournier to pay.

“He was just being a little contrary,” says Brian O’Brien, Metro Sidewalk’s lawyer.

Court records show
banks, collection agencies and other creditors have also pursued
Fournier. Hammer and Hand sued to collect another $60,000 for work on
his home in 2008. That bill—now up to $74,000 with interest—remains
unpaid, although a Multnomah Countyjudge entered a judgment against Fournier in May.

Plenty of people don’t pay their bills—even some who live in mansions.

But it was Fournier’s seeming obsession with safety that got him in real trouble.

Nobody should have been surprised when Fournier confronted a rowdy group in Laurelhurst Park.

In
conversations with neighbors and online, Fournier had lamented the
dangers he saw in one of the east side’s most affluent neighborhoods.

“The Portland
Business Alliance, through their SAFE program, in cooperation with
Portland Police, and the Parks Department, have succeeded in pushing a
large portion of the homeless population from the downtown east across
the river,” Fournier wrote on a parks department blog in November 2008.
“There has been a large increase in camping, drinking, littering, drug
use, sexual activity (used condoms everywhere), and abusive and mentally
ill individuals harassing park users.”

Fournier felt city officials ignored his concerns.

“Pleas
made to Southeast Precinct Police and Park Rangers, as well as Mark
Warrington, [Parks] Public Safety Manager, have resulted in no
improvement or noticeable action,” he continued.

“Everybody I have
contacted appears to be an apologist for the problems and those who
create them, rather than a problem solver for park users and the
homeowners in the neighborhood.”

So Fournier decided to clean things up himself.

On Feb. 20, 2009, he
heard yelling and the sound of glass breaking near the park’s pond.
Fournier, wearing a uniform, badge and service belt complete with a
Taser and handcuffs, sprang into action.

“I believed that a park visitor was possibly being assaulted,” Fournier later wrote.

“[I] approached the
general area of the noise, to observe the situation, and found myself in
the middle of a group of at least six, possibly nine individuals, all
wearing black, most partially clad in leather with studs, and several
with pentagrams on their backs.”

Fournier told the beer-swilling crew to leave the park.

“After several of the
individuals began approaching me from several directions,” he wrote, “I
ordered them to lie down prone on the ground, for my own safety.”

All except one of them lay down. That man advanced on him. Fournier unholstered his Taser and shot him.

The man later identified in a police report as “Fred Alfredo” fell to the ground.

“Ow, what the fuck?” he yelled.

Fournier handcuffed another of the men and waited for police to arrive. For the moment, by his standards, he was a hero.

After the Taser
incident, Fournier faxed a three-page “incident report” to the East
Precinct, using the clipped language cops favor.

He did admit to excessive zeal.

“There was a question
as to whether I had exceeded my authority,” Fournier wrote of the Taser
incident. “[I] will modify my procedures and response in the future to
include observation and reporting to police dispatch.”

Parks
officials banned Fournier from Laurelhurst Park for 30 days for
carrying and using a Taser on park grounds. But before that exclusion
went into effect, police responded to another incident, this one at the
park’s community center.

“Upon arrival, I
observed a black and white Crown Victoria [the standard model for police
cars] with a badge on the door (decal),” wrote the responding officer.
“Fournier was standing beside this car flagging me down. Fournier was
wearing a dark uniform and jacket with a badge and duty belt.”

Fournier
told the officer he’d seen a homeless man sleeping in the park and told
him he’d have to leave by the 10 pm closing time. When the man failed
to leave the park, Fournier called the police.

Soon after that
incident, his exclusion from the park went into effect. Fournier turned
his vigilance to other neighborhood hot spots.

Just before 8 am on
Oct. 14, 2009, Fournier saw Bob Bullock, a cameraman for KATU TV Channel
2, taping outside Laurelhurst Elementary, which one of Fournier’s two
children attended.

Fournier
told Bullock to stop filming and attempted to block his view by moving
his SUV in front of Bullock’s camera. Bullock showed Fournier his KATU
identification, but Fournier ignored it.

Fournier flashed a
badge and “called me a ‘fucking stupid, fucking loser reporter,’”
Bullock wrote in a now-pending lawsuit. “[Fournier] then swung his hand
at me striking the camera twice, which I was holding while filming.

“[Fournier]
then grabbed the camera and knocked me to the ground. With [Fournier]
over the top of me, I remained on the ground. [Fournier] then held me
down with his foot pressed violently against my chest cavity.” (Bullock
captured much of the incident with his camera. Watch the footage at
wweek.com.)

Police arrested
Fournier and charged him with felony assault, criminal mischief and
impersonating a police officer (for flashing a badge).

Fournier told police
he feared Bullock was a predator lurking to videotape children, an
explanation that made little sense given that he had seen Bullock’s KATU
identification and called him a “reporter,” as tape of the incident
reveals.

Fournier was convicted of assault and sentenced to four days in jail and two years of probation.

Not long after cutting down the rhododendrons in early 2011, Fournier and his family fled Laurelhurst for Southeast Portland.

“The neighbors ran us out,” he would later say.

On Feb. 19, 2010, a
limited liability company registered to Fournier’s parents’ California
address paid $735,000 for an elegant 1905 Old Portland-style home in
Ladd’s Addition.

There is no mortgage recorded with the sale, which suggests the Fourniers paid cash for the 4,700-square-foot home.

As in Laurelhurst,
Fournier decorated elaborately for Halloween. He also began a series of
projects: He sunk 10-foot fence posts, hanging security lights on some;
he bulldozed the backyard and tore out interior steps.

He got into disputes
with homeowners next door and across the street, says Jenny Myrick, who
lived next door to Fournier in Ladd’s Addition.

“I think what
happened here is part of a pattern,” says Myrick, who says Fournier
would talk to her for hours while she worked on her garden. “Peter had
problems with everybody. He was at odds with everyone in front of his
house, beside it and behind.”

Former
neighbors in Lake Oswego, where Fournier lived from 2001 through 2006,
recall similar behavior. There, he clashed with city officials over a
fence and ran afoul of city code when he dotted his 2.3-acre property
with about 100 John Kerry signs in 2004.

“I remember he
started to build a fence. It stopped and stayed in a state of suspended
animation for about a year and then disappeared,” says Doug Babb, who
lived across the street from Fournier in Lake Oswego. “He was known at
the local coffee shop as the ‘Coffee Bomber,’ because he allegedly threw
a cup of coffee at somebody during a political argument.”

Today, Fournier has fled Ladd’s Addition, too. His house there sold July 6 for $660,000, a loss of $75,000.

Meanwhile, the Laurelhurst property remains on the market for $1.8 million.

The “For Sale” sign
in front is rapidly disappearing into the grass, and a 1979 Chevy
pickup, registered to a man who, prior to becoming Fournier’s caretaker,
lived in a camper parked on various streets in the neighborhood,
occupies the driveway.

A few blocks away on
East Burnside Street, Kristine Bitar Wilkins, who grew up in the house,
runs the Bitar family property business with her husband, Michael.

Friends keep them posted on the goings-on at the Bitar mansion, but the Wilkinses cannot bring themselves to drive by.

“My wife is so sick
about what happened to the house she can’t talk about it anymore,” says
Michael Wilkins. “It’s not just a foreclosure, it’s a tragedy.”

And Peter Fournier? He’s moved on, across the river, to a new neighborhood...in Southwest Portland.